The present disclosure relates generally to the field of computer systems for storage optimization utilizing dynamic granularity and storage optimization.
Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, is a technology consisting of computer components and recording media used to retain digital data. It is generally knowns as a core function and fundamental component of computers. The central processing unit (CPU) of a computer manipulates data by performing computations. Storage tiering is the movement of data to different types of data storage drives or a different tier within the same disk based on the performance and capacity requirements. Tiering allows the majority of data to reside on slower, larger, cheaper drives—normally SATA—whilst most active data resides on the more performant and expensive drives, such as Fibre Channel and flash SSD.
A tiering computer system monitors array activity over a 24-hour period and generates a “heat map” that guides data migration to the most appropriate tier every 24 hours. When running in automatic mode, it is a fully automated process without a policy engine, which means the user must trust the array software to make decisions. A heat map is a workload activity metric that is calculated for each extent in a logical volume. The workload activity is expressed as a temperature gradient from hot (high activity) to cold (low activity). Use of the heat map transfer utility requires the tiering computer system monitoring function to be enabled at each of the primary and secondary storage systems involved in the heat map transfer.
The heat map transfer utility periodically transfers tiering computer system heat map information from primary to secondary storage systems. The secondary storage system generates migration plans based on the heat map data and (the secondary storage system's) current physical configuration. In this way, the performance characteristics of the secondary storage are consistently updated to reflect that of primary storage. Multiple secondary storage systems are supported. Alternatively, it is possible to have multiple primary storage systems that are associated with a single secondary storage system. It is recommended that the secondary storage system has the same physical configuration as the primary storage system. Secondary storage systems are then workload optimized based on primary storage system usage, with no performance penalties if data recovery is necessary.